Cagayan Valley's Independent Newspaper

‘Shabu’ price rises in Cagayan Valley amid war on drugs

TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan- The war on drugs has forced a price mark-up of up to 25 percent on street value of methamphetamine hydrochloride or “shabu” in Cagayan Valley region, an official of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said.

PDEA Regional Director Laurefel Gabales said, according to intelligence report, the street prices of shabu has increased from P4,000 to P5,000 per gram due to scarcity of supply of the illegal drugs in the local market.

The original street was estimated at P3,000 per gram.

“Because of the government’s massive anti-illegal drug drive, dealers could hardly penetrate the local market now while thousands of their runners or distributors have already surrendered to authorities,” Gabales said.

He said drug surrenders in the region, which has reached 18,273, are now being closely monitored by PDEA and the Philippine National Police (PNP), with the help of local and village officials in the region.

Gabales said that “those who will be caught again doing the same thing will be incarcerated to ensure that they [surrenderers] will totally abandon their illegal activities.”

Cagayan province has the highest number of surrenders in the region with 7,528 followed by Isabela, 6,588; Nueva Vizcaya, 2307; Isabela, 1044; Quirino, 22; and Batanes,34.

Seven drug suspects- five in Cagayan and one each in Quirino and Nueva Vizcaya have been killed after a series of operations conducted by PDEA and PNP and at least 147,033 houses all over the Region were visited as part of the ‘Oplan Tokhang’ implementation.

Meanwhile, PNP Region 2 Director Gilbert Sosa also conducted an ocular inspection on all provincial and municipal police stations to validate their accomplishments in the implementation of ‘Oplan Tokhang’.

While most of the police officials in police stations have performed “well” in the administration’s thrusts against illegal drugs, Sosa said he still wanted to ensure that all police units are performing well, saying that there are still some who got a “very low” accomplishment rate in the campaign.

He said the validation of the police units’ accomplishments aims to ensure authenticity and accuracy of reports being submitted to higher headquarters and also advised police officials to carefully assess intelligence reports they receive to avoid misidentification. Previously published in Rappler.com/TNF/Julius Catulin